North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has isolated
his country almost completely from the rest of the world. A film crew was
fortunate to be allowed to film for ten days in a land where there is virtually
no freedom of speech.

North Koreans have no contact with the outside
world or access to the Internet.

"Only when the beloved General is
satisfied with my work will I attend to marriage and my own personal happiness,"
says Ri Hui Ran. The North Korean works in a state-run factory, standing
between huge bright blue and pink rolls of fabric used to make underpants. All
the interviewees in this documentary were selected by the North Korean Ministry
of Culture to talk to the invited journalists. The filmmaker Carmen Butta was
one of them: she was able to shoot for ten days in the state, which only rarely
allows a glimpse behind its borders and keeps its population firmly suppressed.

North Korean comrades only wear their hair up
to five centimeters long, with a maximum of seven for older people, if they
want to avoid being labeled counterrevolutionaries or decadent followers of
Western styles.

The North Korean regime tried to present the
journalists with a different yet very revealing image of itself: a dolphin show
to entertain the capital city’s residents, picnics in the park, tourists
visiting beautiful Mount Kumsang, a hair salon in Pyongyang, and children who
perform and sing with irritating perfection. And yet the real nature of the
dictatorship shines through in each of the numerous interviews. The selected
interviewees claimed they lack neither freedom of religion nor of expression.
They all said North Korea was the happiest country in the world.

Only members of the nomenclature and
businessmen with hard currency from trade or smuggling with China are able to
gamble.

The film presents us with the sort of images
that have never before been seen from North Korea. It shows how Kim Jong Un has
tried to court his country’s middle classes, which itself questions his
regime’s future. How long will it take before information from abroad and the
stories of refugees give North Koreans the idea that maybe something is missing
in the “best country in the world.”